The "W" trek in Torres del Paine is a classic. We arrived a little late to the party, but this turned out to be a lucky break as the trails were rather empty and the trees were turning their austral fall colors. But, it is cold this time of year so we doubled up on sleeping bags and borrowed a tent from our Workaway hostel in Puerto Natales and set off. Our first day consisted of heavy fog and rain/snow, pretty much miserable conditions even if all you want to do is see stuff. But sky Moses had our back and parted the clouds the morning after and until we hiked out the last day. I still can't believe our luck with the weather, some of the people we stayed with at the same place in town didn't see a thing for their whole trek. When you do see the towers it sort of makes you feel a tug in your chest to look at them too intently. In numbers they are taller than El Cap, and command over your existence like only mountains can do. Combined with the turquoise glacial waters laden with rock flour, the fog lifting and falling, and the colors amplified by a low lying sun, it was like taking a bath in a liquified Enya song.
Maybe it's because we are introverts, maybe because we are selfish, but we were glad to have some beta telling us to go in the opposite direction that most people go. Normally, people are dropped off together on a bus or boat to the west side of the W (the trails look like a big W on a map), and end up in the same campsites together every night. We went from east to west, seeing the Torres on our second day. This meant that we had one other couple going in the same direction, and we didn't see them after day two. I would call this lucky; on a trek as internationally popular as the W it would be naïve to think you can "get away" as I would normally describe as the biggest benefit of backpacking. The average traveler, in my opinion, would see the amount of other travelers as an opportunity to meet others and make friends while camping together.
In the march towards progress people in general are becoming more removed from their feral status. People are not wild animals anymore, especially the ones from sterile, organized lives. In order to get into that addictive headspace that one might describe as a connection to nature, for lack of a less cheesy term, it is increasingly necessary to remove yourself from other people. Otherwise they may just drag you out of your mountain therapy session. The next best thing is to find others with a similar mindset. For some the discomfort and fatigue of hiking and camping is a price to pay for what you get to see, for others the discomfort is the fun part. Fear and suffering set your priorities straight, and remind you who you are. This is not an argument for one way or the other, maybe just why some are the way they are.
Traveling is a means to experience new things and new ways of thinking, but it is not always easy to stomach another point of view - I like to move fast, hiking or running or whatever in the mountains. Many people judge this negatively; how do you even see anything? What is the point? Moving slowly you get to see so much more, they say. But for me the movement is the point: going for a trail run or climbing, or both, you really get to feel the mountains. I am enjoying/appreciating the experience as much (probably more) than the next person regardless of how miserable I look. If I look beat it's been a good day. There are people that go slowly and wave and smile as I run by, I wave and smile back. We have a mutual understanding. There are many more that seem offended, and don't wave or smile. The most vocal have been travelers.
To me that is so odd. Don't we travel with the idea that other people enjoy and do things differently? Maybe it is easy to forget that even people that are not "foreign" to you may actual be more foreign than someone from another country. It is not an enlightened point of view to take the trails slow, it is only one amongst many. It is easy to dismiss something you don't understand as wrong, but this is the greatest disservice you can do to yourself as a traveler. I'll admit I am guilty of being frustrated on numerous occasions with things we have experienced on the road, either with not understanding how something is done in another country or my inability to understand in the first place. The point is to try to understand that you may be on the wrong side of the fence if you are offended or frustrated with a situation. Just smile and wave back.
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